Page:The New Penelope.djvu/290

284 Theirs was the struggle of a proud ambition—

Ours is the full fruition.

Thou, yellow nugget, wert the star

That drew these willing votaries from afar,

'Twere wrong to call thee lustreless or base

That lightest onward all the human race,

Emblem art thou, in every song or story,

Of highest excellence and brightest glory:

Thou crown'st the angels, and enthronest Him

Who made the cherubim:

My reverend thought indeed is not withholden,

O nugget golden!

MAGDALENA.

You say there's a Being all-loving,

Whose nature is justice and pity;

Could you say where you think he is roving?

We have sought him from city to city,

But he never is where we can find him,

When outrage and sorrow beset us;

It is strange we are always behind him,

Or that He should forever forget us.

But being a god, he is thinking

Of the masculine side of the Human;

And though just, it would surely be sinking

The God to be thoughtful for woman.

For him and by him was man made:

Sole heir of the earth and its treasures;

An after-thought, woman—the handmaid,

Not of God, but of man and his pleasures.

Should you say that man's God would reprove us,

If we found him and showed him our bruises?